One of the last American institutions where people have no choice but interact with different demographics, different races, different religions, different social classes. We all still know each other so well that just by looking, we know exactly who everyone will vote for, but just looking at the line you can feel the passive aggression.
The election denying candidate is in full force tonight. His people are on every side of the parking lot, determined to sweep up every vote they can even in the face of certain defeat. They've even brought their kids to stand with them and watch as they turn the cheek during a 30 minute tongue lashing from an angry Jewish guy (not me). What does this tell us?
It tells us that however bad we want our world, they want it more. We are fighting for our corner of earth, they are fighting for all creation. They know they will lose this one, they don't even believe in the legitimacy of elections and yet they still show up to get every last vote and save every last soul. If this is how committed they are to what they don't believe in, how committed are they to what they do?
You can tell that certain institutions in American life still work because however dysfunctional, the demographics who show up are as diverse as they ever were and ever could be: the election booth, the library, the DMV, dry cleaning, and the emergency room. The US is chaos and it's always been. It's the very dysfunctionality that assures us they work because we all know in our bones that America has always muddled through by the skin of our teeth, foot in front of foot year after year by pure luck.
Ever since the suburban sprawl of the 50s, America's been a land of niches. You may feel deprived of choice, but this country has more choices than any place on earth ever did, too many to ever know how to live our best lives. It's a nation designed to force us into the wrong choices and feeling trapped by our lives.
'Real America' is neither red nor blue, it's 100 years in the past. It's a coagulation of poor people from every country and state on earth who understand nothing about each other, squeezed into a pressure cooker of tenement housing, 12 hour days in dangerous factories, back alley abortions right next to where hookers take their johns, fortitude sustained only by dreams about everything their great-grandchildren would achieve.
This is the world our great-grandparents dreamed of for America. It might have been better than elsewhere, but it was never much fun, and now as then, built on the backs of other people's labor.
This is the world we're going back to. This is what history is made of. A world where later generations achieve everything for which former generations fought, then take for granted, neglect to pay it forward, and then the whole thing collapses again as we so recently masters start working to line the pockets od someone else.
Did it have to be this way? Did we ever have a chance to make the world as permanently secure as it seemed when we were kids?
It doesn't matter now. The more things come undone, the more the insects hatch that lurk in the mud, and the more powerful the storm that gathers. We know our mission just as our grandparents did, because the enemy knows theirs. The enemy is standing in every line with us. They show up to everything, even the battles they don't believe in. We only win when we show their level of commitment.
Vote. Fucking vote.
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